Ok, this turned out better than I’d even hoped!! I noticed in Bon Appetit a month or two ago a comment on infusing your own vodka. I thought that sounded like a fun idea and happened to have 2 almost full bottles of vodka in the freezer for some random reason. I think they were left over from IronSister’s Dirty Martini lingerie shower a looooong time ago. So two weeks ago I pulled them out and poured them into jars and added several blood oranges(pith completely removed to avoid bitterness) to one jar, several sour cherries to another, and a whole bunch of blackberries to a jar of vanilla vodka. I left them in the fridge for 2 weeks, shaking them up from time to time.

With Sexy Husband’s line of work, we have no end of musicians around. I was looking for a particular kind of guest for the vodka sampling occasion. The type of guest who isn’t burdened at my demands to sample my various cocktail creations at 5:30pm. And I had my dreams come true when a good friend, who I will call Rockstar Scotty, joined us for dinner. We came up with the following combinations. I highly recommend them all!

Creamy Cherry – sour cherry vodka with old fashioned cream soda (I used 1 oz of vodka per drink because we obviously had to have a few)

I served these all over ice, in martini glasses. Rockstar Scotty liked the Black Vanilla best, Sexy Husband and I both thought the Creamy Cherry was pretty amazing. All were great and a lot of fun!

I’m definitely going to try some other ones: watermelon and nectarine seem like a good place to start. I also have some lychees that might make for some nice drinks. If you get creative and infuse your own booze, let me know what combos you try!